Heretofore, as a contact device, one has been known, which includes: a contact block including a plurality of fixed terminals provided with fixed contacts, and including a movable contactor provided with movable contacts which contact and leave the fixed contacts; and a driving block that drives the movable contactor (for example, refer to Patent Literature 1).
In this Patent Literature 1, permanent magnets are arranged in the vicinity of the contact block, and arcs generated in an event where the contacts contact and leave each other are extended to outsides of the contacts by force of the permanent magnets, thus making it possible to extinguish the generated arcs. Here, each of the outsides of the contacts stands for a direction other than an inside of each pair of the contacts, that is, a direction other than a side opposite to other fixed terminal, the side being of the fixed terminal having the fixed contact in which the arc is generated at a contact portion.